SmogRank / History / Country race
Countries, worst air first, day by day
Each country's typical measured city over the 30 days to every day since January 2023, worst first. Press Play to watch the order change, or drag the slider to any day.
The worst countries for PM2.5 over the 7 days to 9 Sep 2026: Malawi 60.0 µg/m³, Pakistan 37.1 µg/m³ and Nepal 29.9 µg/m³.
- 1Malawi5 cities60.0
- 2Pakistan15 cities37.1
- 3Nepal3 cities29.9
- 4Indonesia5 cities27.7
- 5Nigeria3 cities27.7
- 6Montenegro5 cities26.1
- 7Chile47 cities25.7
- 8India230 cities, was 21222.9
- 9Lebanon3 cities21.9
- 10Kyrgyzstan3 cities19.1
- 11South Africa38 cities16.7
- 12Bosnia and Herzegovina5 cities15.5
- 13Kazakhstan5 cities15.1
- 14Ghana5 cities14.5
- 15Mexico49 cities14.2
- 16Hong Kong12 cities14.1
- 17Philippines3 cities13.5
- 18Senegal4 cities13.3
- 19Martinique3 cities12.2
- 20Italy24 cities11.9
+ 32 more countries, 11.5 µg/m³ and below
- 35United States899 cities5.5
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Sweden since 4 Sep 2026, Latvia since 3 Sep 2026, Lithuania since 12 Aug 2026 and Malta since 7 Aug 2026.
Countries counted each day
A country's number is its typical measured city: the median of its cities' means over the 30 days (a city needs 21 of them measured; 5 of 7 on the 7-day race), shown only with 3 such cities. A country whose monitors go quiet fades out where it stood rather than sliding down, so a gap never reads as cleaner air; "was" beside a city count marks a month after many cities joined or left. Some large countries are thin or missing because their monitors' licences don't allow reuse. How we rank.
Not covered: the government monitoring networks of China and Turkey, which publish only on their own websites; we are building the readers for them. Most cities there are missing from this board, not clean. Why.